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Erik: What was your motivation to become a news correspondent for Fox news in New York?
Kyung: You know when I think about my personality and I’m naturally just quite inquisitive
and wanting to be in the center of what ever is going on, it’s not a stretch to understand
why I wound up going into journalism. But when I was younger I think it was not something
that I even had to bandwidth to dream about because it wasn’t a career that, certainly,
that my parents encouraged me to pursue, like ‘no its not a type of career field that
is safe, it’s kind of a long shot’. I think that for me I remember seeing Connie
Chung on the news and that was huge and I think she had a tremendous impact. Not only
on Asian American young women seeing her and being able to aspire in that direction, but
for her to be there on the evening news and out there and being a credible and articulate
and somebody with gravitas whose deliver the news to the nation, to America. And I think
for that she really was such a pioneer and I give her every credit because I think that
she really sparked in me ‘Yes I can do that too.”
Erik: And a couple of years ago Connie Chung presented you with and award?
Kyung: Oh yeah! Yeah so I came to New York with this sort of nebulous dream that I wanted
to be Connie Chung, but not knowing how to make that happen. And little by little I got
my foot in as an unpaid intern, a production assistant and worked my way up in the Fox
5 news room to a place where I became a correspondent, I was the first Korean American broadcast
reporter in New York. And then also I was very involved with the Korean American Journalist
association and then through them they had a mentorship program where they were connecting
up and coming journalists with very established journalists and they actually paired me with
Connie Chung. And she became my mentor and took me out to lunch and she is so kind and
very, very generous and she… it was mind boggling to that for someone like me who had
this dream of being around her aura that she would actually be someone who was mentoring
me. And then a couple of years ago, when I received an award for the community work that
I was doing she was also, again, kind enough to present me with the award.